Victoria’s Police Minister has defended officers who used pepper spray, rubber bullets and flashbangs to control crowds during anti-immigration demonstrations in Melbourne’s CBD on Sunday.
Thousands of protesters gathered in the city, with police stepping in to separate an anti-immigration march from a counter-protest group at the northern end of the CBD. Two officers were injured during the clashes.
Commander Wayne Cheeseman, who spoke to media following the protests, said officers were targeted with rocks, glass bottles, and rotten fruit and responded with force to subdue violent participants. “Some members of the counter-protest group came specifically to attack police,” he said.
Police Minister Anthony Carbines told ABC Radio Melbourne on Monday that officers had every right to deploy crowd control measures. “They would not have had to deploy that operational equipment unless they felt it was necessary, and we certainly back them in the work that they did to maintain the peace,” he said. He added that the public’s lack of respect for the law contributed to the escalation.
However, a counter-protester present during the clashes disputed the police account. She told ABC Radio Melbourne that she did not see any violence from the counter-protest group and was hit with pepper spray while standing nearby. “There wasn’t any violence coming from the counter-protest, and the actual pepper spraying came completely out of the blue from the police,” she said.
Carbines dismissed the woman’s account, saying those pepper-sprayed were “right up under the nose of Victoria Police causing violence and disrupting the community.”
Calls for protest permits have reignited after Sunday’s clashes. Victorian Opposition Shadow Police Minister David Southwick urged the government to require permits for demonstrations, similar to NSW, to “restore law and order”.
Premier Jacinta Allan rejected the proposal, noting that her advice from Victoria Police was against such a system and pointing out that similar arrangements in Sydney had not curtailed protests.
Meanwhile, the state government is preparing new laws to restrict certain protest activities, including bans on terror organisation flags, masks, balaclavas, glue, ropes and locks at demonstrations. The legislation comes nearly a year after initial announcements.
Image: Victoria Police
